Irish EP election 5 June 2009

Elections for the European Parliament took place across the EU in June 2009. Ireland voted on Friday 5 June. The Republic of Ireland elects 12 MEPs (down from 13 in 2004) by PR-STV (see ballot paper) from four 3-member constituencies. The low district magnitude (the number of seats per constituency) and the small number of seats overall explain the relatively high degree of disproportionality. For results of Ireland's 2007 election, click here. For information about the results of elections 1948-2007, click here. For arguments for and against retaining PR-STV as Ireland's electoral system click here.

Results

The main feature of the results were vote losses for the two government parties, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party, and gains for opposition parties. Of the 13 incumbent MEPs, two retired, seven were re-elected, and four were defeated. Eleven of the 12 MEPs elected supported a Yes vote in the first Lisbon Treaty referendum in June 2008 and 1 (Joe Higgins, Socialist party, Dublin) supported a No vote.

Note: figures based on complete disaggregation of Others, with each of the 14 independent candidates treated as a separate unit.

If seats were allocated purely on the basis of total national first preference votes, and if all votes had been cast as they were on 5 June, then the allocation of the 12 seats under the Sainte-Laguë method (generally seen as the 'fairest' since it does not systematically favour either larger or smaller parties) would have been FF 3, FG 4, Labour 2, SF 1, Libertas 1, Independent (Marian Harkin) 1. Under the more widely used D'Hondt method, which tends to give the benefit of the doubt to larger parties, the figures would have been FF 4, FG 5, Labour 2, SF 1.

Of the 12 MEPs, three (25 per cent) are female, a much higher percentage than in the Dáil (13.9 per cent), though less than the proportion among the MEPs elected in 2004 (five out of 13, or 38.5 per cent).